The Metropolis Guide to the Best Cities to Live, Work, and Play in (2015)

Metropolis ranks the best cities to live, work, and play in.

Toronto is Metropolis‘s top livable city of 2015.

The word “livability” gets tossed around a lot these days when it comes to the popular discussion of cities. But what do we mean by the term, exactly? In our extensive urban coverage throughout the year, we often look at a variety of facets that contribute to a city’s overall quality of life—i.e., the sum of the housing, amenities, connectivity, and, in a word, pleasures a city has to offer the people who live in it. So, in addition to ranking our top three livable locales for 2015, we consulted *a variety of experts to identify cities that are excelling in key areas such as smart infrastructure, walkability, and preservation. And we round out our selection by spotlighting nine other rising cities to watch in the years to come.

#1 Most Livable City
Toronto

Riverdale Park East is one of Toronto’s most popular parks and areas for recreation. Its grounds command a breathtaking panorama of the downtown skyline.

After four chaotic years under car-loving, crack-smoking former mayor Rob Ford, life in Toronto has returned to normal. Fortunately, the city’s “weak mayor” system gives the chief magistrate, like council’s other 44 members, just one vote. In other words, even the worst administration can only inflict limited damage. The city is no longer tearing itself apart and has returned its focus to realizing its enormous urban potential.

Indeed, Toronto is in the midst of a transformation that will make one of the most livable cities on earth even more attractive. Condo and office towers continue to pop up at a fast and furious rate as people—especially seniors and young professionals—flood into a downtown where they can enjoy Canada’s most urban environment. Growth in the inner core now outpaces suburbia for the first time since the 1970s—in 2014 alone, more than 20,000 residential units were completed.

Long-term public/private sector projects are also remaking vast swaths of the city according to principles urban guru Jane Jacobs, who lived in Toronto from 1968 until her death in 2006, would have admired. The best example is Waterfront Toronto (WT). Created in 2001 to revitalize the city’s post-industrial harbor lands, it has presided over the creation of whole new neighborhoods with parks, complete streets, ultra-high-speed Internet, five-minute access to transit, and full mixed-use zoning. Much to its critics’ chagrin, WT’s strategy starts not with necessities—roads and transit will come later—but with “frills” such as Sugar Beach, Sherbourne Common, and Corktown Common. Its success, however, is that the waterfront is suddenly sexy.

The city’s largest landlord, the Toronto Community Housing Corporation, is rebuilding Canada’s largest social housing complex, a low-rise Pruitt-Igoe called Regent Park. The failed 1950s low-income residential complex is being torn down and replaced by a mixed-income neighborhood with cultural amenities and a stunning aquatic center. For the first time in more than 60 years, a bank has moved into the area. Oh, and Regent Park actually has a park now.

Population
Within the next 15 years, Toronto’s population will grow to more than three million.

Job Opportunity
The last decade has seen double-digit job growth in the downtown core, greatly eclipsing the same figure for the city’s suburbs.

Investment
In 2014, the city council approved more than $20 billion in development.

Preservation
Ontario’s Greenbelt, a 1.8-million-acre swath of protected farmland and green space, has encouraged high-density, high-rise development in the capital.

One of the most innovative programs, Tower Renewal, aims to find ways to reconfigure the languishing 1,000-plus residential slabs that comprise much of Toronto’s inner-suburban landscape. Built between the 1950s and the 1980s, these concrete high-rises were intended for young middle-class couples but ended up as enclaves of poor immigrants. The challenge is to upgrade the buildings to modern environmental standards and change outdated single-use zoning regulations to allow a more healthy mix of residential, retail, and recreation.

Transit remains a huge issue. Toronto has not kept up with demand, but that’s changing in a flurry of projects that will extend the subway to suburban municipalities north of the city. There’s also the Eglinton Crosstown, a 12-mile light-rail line now under construction that will provide 100 million rides annually when it’s completed in 2023. Meanwhile, the long-awaited express train connecting downtown Toronto to Pearson International Airport began operation in early June.

The most unexpected development in Toronto’s inner-suburbs is the extraordinary Ismaili Centre/Aga Khan Museum. Located in a nondescript area in the city’s North End, the two luminous structures are contained within an exquisite contemporary version of a traditional Islamic garden. This part of Toronto has never looked so beautiful, or been so enticing. The center highlights the diversity that fuels Toronto’s civic dynamism—successive waves of immigration have made the city a microcosm of the world. Though there are inevitable tensions, multiculturalism has turned a waspy colonial outpost into a model of tolerance envied globally.

The most obvious testament to the vitality of immigrant culture is Toronto’s burgeoning food scene. A city that barely knew what garlic was 50 years ago now relishes cuisines from the world over. Consider the case of Uncle Tetsu, the celebrated Japanese cheesecake maker who chose Toronto to open its first store outside Asia. The unassuming shop sells only the one item, but from the moment it appeared last April, the lineups have been blocks long.

Still, Toronto’s urban evolution hasn’t always been easy. A controversial move to demolish the eastern portion of its crumbling 50-year-old elevated highway, the Gardiner Expressway, was rejected by the city council. The speed of change has also left many feeling the city is no longer theirs. Growing economic disparity has also undermined civic confidence; lack of affordable housing is worse than ever. “I’d rather be here than just about any other place on Earth,” enthuses Richard (Creative Class) Florida, who moved north in 2007. But he warns that the city shouldn’t be “over-romanticized as an urban paradise.”

Courtesy Aaron Wynia

Urban Fabric

Kensington Market is one of Toronto’s most successful mixed-use neighborhoods. With a vibrant arts and food scene, historic townscape, and mixed traffic, it’s easy to see why so the area is beloved by so many Torontonians.

Courtesy Ben Rahn

Up Express

The newly opened Union Pearson (UP) Express airlink connects Union Station in downtown to Toronto Pearson International Airport. The new rail line is the first fruit of the city’s ambitious $11.5 billion transportation rehaul, dubbed The Big Move.

Tower Renewal

It’s estimated that some one million people live in the concrete high-rise residential towers of Toronto’s inner suburbs. Built between the 1950s and 1980s by mostly private developers, the towers were envisioned as a commodious real estate option for young middle-class couples; after canada’s liberalization of its immigration policies, the slabs quickly became enclaves for migrant populations. “They play an absolutely crucial role as entry housing for newcomers, but they weren’t designed for that,” says architect Graeme Stewart, who for the last decade has mobilized political interest in the towers to preserve their building stock and vital social role. Period zoning mandated that the slabs be set back in a field of green, effectively creating dead zones for commercial and social activity. Rezoning measures based, in part, on Stewart and partner Sabina Ali’s research, have a good chance of being passed into law.

Courtesy Nick Kozak

Public Space

Toronto’s most capacious public space, Nathan Phillips Square is the site of frequent festivals, farmers markets, and protest demonstrations. An ongoing $70 million revitalization project promises to further activate the city’s foremost civic forum.

#2 Most Livable City
Tokyo

Tokyo’s approach to development tends toward impermanence and constantly new construction. Such a ravenous building cycle—homes depreciate rapidly and only have a lifespan of 30 years or so —can be chalked up to economics. This mindset, coupled with relatively lax zoning laws, has always given architects a license for experimentation, and not just in the domestic sphere. Kengo Kuma’s design for the SunnyHills cafe in Tokyo’s leisurely Aoyama neighborhood is a case in point. The project, completed in 2014, was realized for a Taiwanese bakery specializing in pineapple cakes.

Courtesy Daici Ano

Tokyo, home to 32 percent of Japan’s urban population, is the world’s largest urban area, a true megalopolis. Yet, despite its overpowering scale, density, and frenetic pace, it is consistently found at the top of leading urban and socioeconomic indices.

According to Tokyo-based architect Alastair Townsend, this success “stems from the relative safety and social order engendered by Japan’s incredibly strong cultural cohesion.” He also credits Tokyo’s excellent public infrastructure and bike-friendly roads. This, “despite having no cycle paths.”

Tokyo also gets high marks for housing. With its massive population, the city is constantly challenged to provide adequate and affordable residences. It has been able to meet these challenges—though “affordable” is a relative term—through a laissez-faire approach to development that allows some pretty interesting and dense urban configurations to arise, such as super-efficient residential architecture on tiny lots in very mixed, walkable neighborhoods.

It’s also this type of density and mixed programming that makes Tokyo one of the leading cities for “aging in place.” With one of the oldest populations in the world, Tokyo, says aging-in-place expert Mark Hager, “has committed considerable resources to rethinking how its communities are designed.” He cites centuries of multi-generational housing as one reason Tokyo has been quick to “create communities where older people can continue living where they wish, have many generations and neighbors near, and still get the care or assistance they need.” Technology-driven efforts to service this demographic—ceiling cameras to monitor movement, beds that convert into wheelchairs, high-tech chair lifts—appear far ahead of similar developments in the United States.

Sustainability may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Tokyo, but new initiatives are changing that. The city government is lowering its carbon footprint by greening existing buildings, while new structures in excess of 54,000 square feet must meet sustainable standards before receiving permits. It is also developing a 27-million-unit smart meter infrastructure to link users and utility platforms, in order to make city-wide energy management more efficient.

Clearly, Tokyo is doing a lot of things right, but there is room for improvement. “Here, 14-hour work days are normal—a badge of honor even,” Townsend says. “Would the salarymen who cram into trains every morning and stumble home exhausted late at night agree that Tokyo is the world’s most livable city?” Tradition is not easily trumped here, but one hopes Tokyo can set its considerable ingenuity to ameliorating such problems. —Guy Horton

Public safety
Tokyo is the safest city in the world, despite its significant population.

Cost of Living
Tokyo’s entire metropolitan area is more affordable than any other megacity (defined as cities with more than ten million residents.

Culinary Destination
The city has more Michelin-starred restaurants—267 in total —than any other city.

#3 Most Livable City
Helsinki

One of the main event venues for Helsinki Design Week in 2014 was the former abattoir—a prime example of Helsinki’s adaptive reuse movement and culinary revival. Now named Kellohalli, the historical slaughterhouse was renovated into a venue that integrates local food, pop-up eateries, and urban gardens.

Courtesy Aino Huovio

Helsinki punches above its weight. That’s how Hanna Harris, program director of Helsinki Design Week, describes the city’s success in areas ranging from maker culture and design heritage, to infrastructure and accessibility. These strengths, along with its quality of services, architecture, and ample green space, are what make the city one of the world’s most livable.

“We are using design in a very cross-sectoral way,” says Harris. “The city is working out different things, from infrastructure and planning to governance and services.” Helsinki Design Week itself is a prime example of how Helsinki is a design-driven city. The home base of the 2015 festival is the L3 harbor warehouse in Jätkäsaari, an adaptive reuse project on the former site of an inner-city commercial harbor. This rethinking of the old is evident in the team’s project with architectural collective Uusi Kaupunki that is envisioning a new future for the island of Vallisaari off the city center—intertwining the idea of manmade and nature.

he architectural collective who are doing the project with us this coming fall

“Helsinki is finding the next stage of how it will manifest itself,” Harris says. “The city also intends to develop even further the transport systems that are already very advanced.” In this vein, the city is launching an on-demand bus service, called Kutsuplus, and planning to fold car- and bike-sharing into an ambitious smartphone-enabled public-transport system by 2025—the end goal being that car ownership will be unnecessary. This idea may seem extreme, but when one considers the city’s forward-thinking attitude and accessible technology—the ubiquitous free WiFi in the city is fast enough to allow video calling and HD streaming—it suddenly doesn’t seem so unattainable. “As we question how designers are shaping, imagining, and forecasting futures,” says Harris, “Helsinki, with all that’s going on, is in a very good position to answer that.” —Shannon Sharpe

Accessibility
Helsinki came in 2nd place for the European Commission’s 2014 Access City Award.

Population
The city’s population is expected to increase by 40% over the next 35 years.

Cycling
There are 745 miles of well-maintained bike paths.

Hospitality
Special uniformed teams known as the “Helsinki Helpers” advise tourists during the summer.

Walkability
Copenhagen

Cutting a swath through the urban landscape of Copenhagen’s Nørrebro district, Superkilen deserves the superlative in its name. As a celebration of the city’s diversity, and fundamental to its dedication to fostering community interaction, the sprawling park features pedestrian and bike paths, along with playgrounds, Ping-Pong tables, basketball courts, picnic tables, chess boards, and spaces to accommodate skating rinks and impromptu markets.

Courtesy Iwan Baan

There’s a famous saying in Copenhagen that there’s no such thing as bad weather, just inappropriate clothing. It’s a fitting attitude for a city that, despite enduring inclement conditions for the better part of the year, excels in walkability.

The cluster of bikes that jostle outside most buildings is indicative of the city’s preferred mode of transport—50 percent of all journeys to places of work or education in Copenhagen are made by bicycle. This is enhanced by the consistent efforts of its governing bodies to make the urban landscape as pedestrian- and bike-friendly as possible.

In 2009, the city outlined its vision for urban life for the year 2015 in the manifesto A Metropolis for People, which included the goal to increase the amount of pedestrian traffic by 20 percent. And with Copenhageners now walking an average of 15 minutes per day, compared to 10 minutes in 2010, Morten Kabell, the city’s mayor of technical and environmental affairs, thinks that they have been successful in fulfilling that vision. “We have had the courage to continue taking space from cars and giving it to people,” he says. “If you want people to walk more, it must be safe and a nice experience.”

The key to fostering walkability in an urban space, Kabell says, is giving importance to sidewalks and designing for pedestrians before vehicles. Small design measures, such as installing hanging street lamps in place of lampposts, help to create as much walking space as possible. The other important factor is focusing on prioritizing people over buildings. “We want people to have a good city life, and walkability is a big part of getting people to slow down and stop, talk, and make eye contact with each other,” says Tina Saaby Madsen, the city architect of Copenhagen. “With every project, we talk about how a building can give back to the city—how can we get people out of the buildings and make them part of the community between the buildings?” —Mikki Brammer

Energy
An estimated 39% of Denmark’s total electricity consumption was powered by wind in 2014.

Infrastructure
Copenhagen’s first pedestrian street, Strøget, was established in 1962 and remains the world’s longest.

Bikeability
The city has a 242-mile stretch of bicycle lanes, tracks, and separate routes.

Outdoor Space
96% of all Copenhageners can access an open-air recreational area within 15 minutes of walking.

Culture
Hong Kong

Since 1990, the Asian Society Hong Kong Center has been an instrumental player in the city’s cultural development. In 2012, the center relocated to a new outpost in Admiralty, in what was once an ammunitions warehouse.

Courtesy Michael Moran

In Hong Kong, things move fast. Long renowned as a financial powerhouse, the city has reinvented itself from a handful of local galleries and a small auction market to an international cultural and creative hub, transforming urban life for its residents.

The newfound interest in contemporary culture has been largely thanks to the unprecedented boom in China’s art market, combined with the Special Administrative Region’s enticing combination of a central regional location, tax-free status, financially secure transactions, and robust legal system. Art Basel has also been a cornerstone of the revival, attracting international collectors, auctioneers, and the usual blue-chip suspects such as Galerie Perrotin and Lehmann Maupin Gallery, both of whom set up outposts in Central, the nexus of the emerging art scene. The sheer concentration of people in the city, however, means that the impact on everyday life has been extraordinary, stimulating a new wave of interest in diverse cultural events from Dragon Boat racing to street art.

The government has also initiated several creative programs including the renewal of historic buildings, such as the PMQ enclave, providing fledgling artists and designers some respite from the city’s exorbitant rents. The historic Central Police Station will also soon emerge from a major renovation as a new arts and retail complex.

Such creative placemaking brings new cultural activities across design, fashion, and architecture, fostering more interesting and livable neighborhoods. This has inspired local creative industries such as the nonprofit Spring Workshop in the fast gentrifying Wong Chuk Hang neighborhood, which offers activities ranging from poetry and musical concerts to urban farming. Spring founder Mimi Brown says the evolution has been driven by the denizens of Hong Kong. “We see a desire in this city’s people to find spots of refuge where they can engage in conversation and experimentation around culture.”—Catherine Shaw

Population
The neighborhood of Mong Kok has one of the highest population densities in the world.

Transport
In 1888, the Peak Tram became the first cable funicular in Asia and currently carries up to four million people per year.

Landscape
Indianapolis

In a bold move for a midwestern city, the $63-million Indianapolis Cultural Trail reclaimed a lane of traffic in Indianapolis’s downtown and turned it over to pedestrians and cyclists. To its planners, the trail is a vehicle for introducing twin agents of urban change —valuable design, in the form of Rundell Ernstbuger Associates’ subtle planters and hardscape features, and alternative modes of transit, such as the extensive Pacers bikesharing program.

Courtesy Indianapolis Cultural Trail, Inc.

Unlike the coastal capital cities, Indianapolis is not blessed with any remarkable geographical features. Contours are hard to speak of in a terrain that is breathtakingly flat. When the city was founded in 1821, the land designated for development must have presented planners with an almost naturally occurring tabula rasa that later proved extraordinarily capacious for sprawl.

The paucity of topographical interest is certainly a challenge for city officials looking to distinguish Indianapolis in the fierce marketplace of American cities. “When you don’t have mountains and oceans, you have to create a better environment that makes up for the lack of natural features that make a city exciting,” says Adam Thies, the director of Indianapolis’s Department of Metropolitan Development. Efforts to combat this deficit began a generation ago and accelerated in the new millennium, with the city’s embrace of the greenways and rail-to-trail movements.

Opened in 2003, the Monon Trail, an 18-mile nature corridor extending from the heart of the city to its northern edge, has become an incredibly popular quasi-urban amenity. The Pogue’s Run and White River Trails are picturesque recreational outlets that frame downtown’s longitudinal borders. Connecting these is the prized Indianapolis Cultural Trail, which was opened in 2013. The eight-mile pedestrian and bicycle path loops around the city center, linking numerous attractions including the Capitol, City Market, and the Indianapolis Zoo. With extensive landscaping, street furniture, and public art, the trail has had exactly the cosmopolitan effects its planners hoped it would.

It has also helped catalyze real estate and business investment in Market East, a new central district that promises to greatly increase Indianapolis’s livability quotient. “We’re building a fantastic urban environment downtown,” Thies says. “It’s all about high-quality placemaking. That’s our anti-sprawl policy.” —Samuel Medina

City Plan
Indianapolis’s neoclassical European grid was devised by Alexander Ralston, an apprentice to Pierre L’Enfant.

Building Boom
New downtown development will have reached $1.36 billion by 2017.

Revitalization
The Cultural Trail alone has generated close to $300 million in development, with more to come.

Recreation
The last decade has seen the creation of 150 miles of bike lanes and trails.

Transportation
Medellín

In 2004, Medellín initiated an Integral Urban Projects (IUP) program, investing most heavily in design interventions for those parts of the city lowest on the quality of life index. The IUP’s inaugural project was the Metrocable, Medellín’s highly prized and globally lauded network of gondolas. Over a decade after its introduction, the system has fundamentally reconfigured the populace’s relationship with its city.

Courtesy Edu

Few cities have seen transformation as dramatic as Medellín has in the last decade. In the 1990s, Colombia’s second largest city had the world’s highest murder rate and was ruthlessly ruled by the drug trade. Today, Medellín—which hosted last year’s World Urban Forum—is a vastly different place.

A series of visionary mayors endeavored to rapidly modernize Medellín and unify its fractured urban identity. Their legacies reveal a two-fold approach that infused large investments into transit infrastructure and engaging public spaces. The result is an astonishingly rehauled transportation network encompassing a rapid-transit bus, a privatized bus service, three gondola lift systems, and a tramline that is set to open downtown in September. Together, these provide safe and direct links to the city’s newest civic buildings including the Parques Biblioteca, the Atanasio Girardot Sports Complex, and the 14-acre Jardin Botanico.

The Metrocable system is the most visible of Medellín’s efforts to use public transit to reduce inequality. The gondolas whisk about 3,000 people per hour down two commuter lines from the hilly impoverished comunas to the city center—with the third line connecting tourists to Medellín’s nature preserve Arvi Park.

“The slums aren’t part of the problem, they’re part of the solution,” says Francesco Maria Orsini, head of consultancy for the think tank Urb.Am. “What we’re doing with the Metrocables is to let them be part of the city’s social, economic, and political grid.”

This inclusive mentality is embodied by the open-air escalators in Comuna 13, formerly one of Medellín’s most violent and economically depressed areas. The unorthodox structure has had a dignifying effect on the community, says the escalators’ chief architect Carlos Andres Escobar Gutierrez, and it’s indicative of what’s to come. “We are betting on incredible things planning-wise, tackling big challenges and taking big risks to get there—all within a remarkably short period of time.” —Rebecca Greenwald

Urban Change
Improvements to the city’s fabric like the Metrocable have curbed violence by up to 66% in “intervention” areas.

Cost
The first Metrocable was built for just $24 million and covers 1.2 miles.

Public Space
The city has built 25 new parks and new promenades in the past 15 years.

Smart Infrastructure
Melbourne

Some of Melbourne’s oldest open spaces are working hard beneath the surface, housing major water-harvesting infrastructure thanks to the City of Melbourne and Biofilta. Last February, one of the largest system—two underground tanks that hold a total of 1.3 million gallons of storm water—was installed under the 167-year-old Fitzroy Gardens. It produces up to 18 million gallons to irrigate the surrounding natural landscape.

Courtesy Nils Koenning

Melbourne was a lifeless place when Rob Adams emigrated from his native Zimbabwe in the 1980s. As the city’s new urban designer, he was thoroughly underwhelmed; but he’d brought with him a lesson from Cape Town University, where a rising student population was accommodated not by increasing square footage but by intensifying students’ use of the campus over the course of the day. “It’s the same for Melbourne,” says Adams, now director of city design for the City of Melbourne. “The best way to tackle densification is to repurpose and re-timetable our city to use what it’s already got.”

Today, his vision to invigorate the city is manifest. With its population anticipated to increase by five to seven million by 2040, Melbourne has become even smarter. Municipal councils, designers, and entrepreneurs are embracing digital technology, hot-wiring the city and intensifying infrastructure to transform the built environment and daily lives.

A snapshot reveals that the smart inner city and suburbs like Fitzroy offer all amenities within walking distance—210 acres of city asphalt have been converted to wider footpaths and open space, while in eclectic Smith Street, Collingwood, a proliferation of mid-rise development has popped up along tramlines to cater to a growing population. “High density doesn’t necessarily mean high rise,” says Adams. Whole precincts, like Cremorne, have also become sharing communities with fluid coworking spaces to rent, while modular companies such as Unitised Building fine-tune digital technology to construct the city faster using factory-built prefabricated designs.

While Melbourne consistently tops livability rankings, residents are demanding a bold vision and the government announced last year it had doubled infrastructure investment over the past decade. “If we can continue to repurpose, we’ll become more vibrant,” says Adams. “People will be close to what they need, and we can foster the sense of community.” —Annie Reid

Green Space
The total area of Melbourne’s parks, gardens, and reserves is 1.54 square miles.

Data Platform
The City of Melbourne now publishes 74 open datasets —from heat maps to the Urban Forest platform— for anyone to download and adapt.

Multiculturalism
An estimated 48% of Melbourne residents were born overseas.

Architecture
The city’s oldest building is the Mitre Tavern, which was built in 1837.

Preservation
Pittsburgh

Market at Fifth is a mixed-use development of the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation. The group saved and restored four endangered historic buildings in Market Square in the heart of downtown Pittsburgh. Heinz Healey’s (pictured), a high-end men’s clothing store, was just one of many retail shops that returned to the area. The development achieved LEED-Gold certification, a green building standard.

Courtesy Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh, like so many other Rust Belt cities, faced huge hurdles with the decline of its steel industry. But it is overcoming many of these challenges thanks, in great part, to its preservation movements, neighborhood renewal projects, and active communities.

“We have a significant group of foundations here,” says Raymund Ryan, curator at the Heinz Architectural Center at the Carnegie Museum of Art. “Whether it’s about supporting exhibitions or organizing people to discuss neighborhood or heritage issues, there is a great amount of will here.”

The Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation (PHLF) is a prime example. “We see preservation as a means to improving quality of life,” says president Arthur Ziegler, Jr. “And we see it as a tool for economic revitalization.” Since the 1960s, the group has reinvigorated such areas as the Mexican War Streets, creating low-income housing and turning it into one of the most sought-after historic neighborhoods in the city. These projects continue to happen; for a current one in Wilkinsburg the PHLF acquired deteriorated historic houses, restored them, and is subsidizing sales to low-income individuals or families.

It doesn’t hurt that this support for revitalization has played a role in current mayor William Peduto’s administration. When one-third of the Strip District’s landmark Produce Terminal was in danger of demolition, Peduto stepped in and put the plans to a temporary halt. Eventually the building found its way onto the National Register of Historic Places. Peduto has also established the Bureau of Neighborhood Empowerment to work with communities that have seen historic disinvestment.

Even with support from foundations and politicians, the preservation movement would carry little weight without the community behind it. “There’s a lot of neighborhoods that give the city character,” says Ryan. “During the bleak times, these communities held together. It’s very much about local engagement.” —Shannon Sharpe

Restoration
The local preservation community prevented the demolition of 64 historic buildings in the core downtown business area.

Sustainability
Pittsburgh has the most certified “green” building square footage in the United States.

Infrastructure
The city has more vertical feet of public stairways than San Francisco, Cincinnati, and Portland, Oregon, combined.

Sustainability
Rotterdam

Students at a neighboring college, members of a local church and gym, and neighborhood residents—a lot of people had a say in the design of the Watersquare Benthemplein, an ingenious public plaza and recreation area that opened in December and which will act as a reservoir during heavy storms or floods. It’s a testament to Rotterdam’s serious sustainable initiatives.

Courtesy De Urbanisten

All coastal cities have a precarious relationship with nature, but Rotterdam is in an especially tough spot. With the largest port in Europe—stretching over 48 square miles, the harbor is big enough to contain the island of Manhattan with room to spare—the city has an economy that depends upon the water, yet it must protect itself from inundation. The Maeslantkering storm surge barrier, completed in 1997 as part of a nationwide network of water protection in the Netherlands, more than proved its worth during a storm in 2007.

In 2013, Rotterdam moved some of its harbor activities farther out to sea via the Maasvlakte 2 port expansion project. This opened up interesting civic possibilities, says David Gianotten, managing partner-architect at OMA. “It created a new way for people to live together in the city, with less pressure from industry,” he says. “It was the biggest initiative, not just in terms of climate, but also the sustainability of society.”

Rotterdam is able to implement such changes—which also include a region-wide heat-sharing infrastructure and a widely adopted green roof program—because the city has a very engaged civic society. “Networks are created, maintained, and deepened through such programs,” says Maarten Hajer, who is the director of the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency and chief curator of the 2016 International Architecture Biennial Rotterdam. “We see how designers, business leaders, young entrepreneurs, and intellectuals collaborate with the city government.”

While significant challenges remain, in reducing the harbor’s reliance on fossil fuels and re-energizing the city’s inefficient postwar building stock, both Hajer and Gianotten laud the city’s mayor, Ahmed Aboutaleb, for his political will. “He is very progressive in how he looks at the population, and how he encourages initiatives,” Gianotten says. “And in that, sustainability and especially water management play a very special role.” —Avinash Rajagopal

“Rotterdam has decided that instead of fighting water, it wants to live with it.” —Maxwell Young, the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities project

Water
About a third of the city’s 126-square-mile area is covered by water.

Green Roofs
By the end of last year, an estimated 1,722,000 square feet of roof space in the city had been planted.

Shipping
32,000 seagoing vessels and 87,000 inland vessels call at the Port of Rotterdam each year.

Housing
Singapore

Towering beside a busy expressway, the Interlace reformulates the Modernist equation that high-density equals high-rise. Architect Ole Scheeren, who first developed the design during his tenure at OMA and whose Büro Ole Scheeren saw the project through its completion in 2013. The development, which packs 1,040 homes into the complex’s 31 six-story blocks, is shot through with lush landscaping and generously shaded and airy plazas.

Courtesy Iwan Baan

As nations struggle to house their rapidly growing urban populations, Singapore offers a promising solution with its profusion of innovative high-rise, high-density housing “estates,” as is the local parlance. Today, over 80 percent of the city-state’s resident population lives in public housing.

Key to this success is the Housing & Development Board (HDB), the nation’s public housing agency, which was set up in 1960 to tackle the shortage of housing and clearly overcrowded slums. HDB has since evolved from resettling Singaporeans who once lived in overcrowded villages to catering to the lifestyles of its now 5.5 million inhabitants.

In the last decade, public housing has gone from utilitarian rectangular blocks formulated by faceless public servants to stylish complexes designed by top local architecture firms, such as WOHA Architects, which completed their SkyVille@Dawson in July. Containing 960 units of a variety of apartment types and sporting tropical landscaping and extensive communal spaces, the three-tower scheme humanizes the HDB housing blocks of yesteryear.

SkyVille@Dawson is just one example of HDB enlisting the private sector to create more distinctive public housing. “The concepts that we have tested out in Dawson are also being implemented in other new housing projects in different ways,” says Dr. Cheong Koon Hean, HDB’s chief executive officer. “Our new estates will be greener and more garden-like, to provide a more conducive living environment for residents.”

Against this backdrop of progressive public housing for low- and middle-income residents, Singapore’s developers have turned to starchitects to differentiate their profit-driven projects. Jean Nouvel, Zaha Hadid, and Toyo Ito have all recently designed signature high-rise luxury residences. OMA and Ole Scheeren’s Interlace and Moshe Safdie’s soon-to-be-completed Sky Habitat offer further examples. Yet, Safdie is discerning: “Very few countries at this point are building housing by the government for the people as Singapore does. I don’t think there is any country like that.”—Justin Zhuang

Housing Solution
The Housing & Development Board (HDB) has built one million apartments in 50 years.

Crisis Squashed
Within a decade of its founding, the HDB had already “licked”— i.e., solved—the city-state’s housing crisis.

Home Ownership
About 9 in 10 HDB residents own their apartment.

High-Rise Living
The Pinnacle@Duxton is the tallest public housing project in the world.

Jan Gehl is founding partner of Gehl Architects, and former professor and researcher at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture. He has published several books, including Life Between Buildings, Cities for People, and How to Study Public Life.

Maxwell Young is vice president of global communications and marketing at the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities, an organization that helps cities across the globe become more resilient to the physical, social, and economic challenges of the 21st century.

Jess Zimbabwe is a licensed architect and certified city planner and serves as founding executive director of the Daniel Rose Center for Public Leadership at the National League of Cities and the Urban Land Institute.

Cities to Watch

Valparaíso, Chile

There is a reason why medieval rulers built the fortifications that have made Avila a tourist destination today—at more than 3,000 feet above sea level, it is the highest city in Spain. But in spite of this, the mountainous UNESCO World Heritage Site managed to overcome the challenges of its terrain to win the first-ever Access City Award from the European Commission in 2011 for being accessible to people with dis- abilities; all this thanks to an initiative that has been in place since 2002.

Christchurch

The years following a natural disaster can either define or break a city as it tackles the mammoth task of rebuilding. For Christchurch, New Zealand, the recovery process since the 2011 earthquake has enabled the city to embark on a new creative course—perhaps best symbolized by Shigeru Ban’s transitional Cardboard Cathedral, erected in place of the badly damaged Christchurch Cathedral. Focusing its efforts on the River Avon downtown, Christchurch is reemerging as a greener, more compact, and more resilient city.

Doha

Projects such as Jean Nouvel’s National Museum of Qatar and Zaha Hadid’s Al Wakrah Stadium represent two new areas of growth for Qatar’s capital. The first is a push for the arts—a recently announced architectural competition will add another 86,000 square feet of waterfront art gallery space to the city’s already flourishing institutions. The second is the FIFA World Cup, which has inspired some useful civic infrastructure for all, including much-needed public transit in the form of the Greater Doha Metro Project.

Gothenburg

Forging its own path independent from the capital, Sweden’s second-largest city is actively branding itself as a cultural hub. As the host of one of Scandinavia’s largest cultural festivals, and the Gothenburg International Biennial for Contemporary Art, it is quickly earning global respect. A diverse restaurant scene (and a generally bohemian approach to life), juxtaposed with a respected innovation and sustainability sector driven by the Mistra Urban Futures organization, are helping it become a dynamic global city.

Lagos

This October, Nigeria’s largest city will once again host its annual Fashion and Design Week. Since 2012, the event has drawn designers from all over the continent, and a popular platform for young talent has launched new careers in an industry that has expanded as the region has prospered. The design world is taking note of lagos’s rapid growth—the task of finding creative solutions for a city with an estimated 21 million people has engaged international architects, including Rem Koolhaas, and David Adjaye, and local talent NLÉ.

Reno

It might be known for its casinos and quickie divorces, but Reno, Nevada, is also earning a more respected reputation as a hub for historic preservation. It hasn’t turned its back on its past, however. The focus of its preservation efforts is the repurposing of three particular buildings: the courthouse where people filed for divorce, the post office where they got a mailbox to establish residency, and a residential hotel that was home to many early transitory residents (often women fleeing unhappy marriages).

Shenzhen

In the last decade, China’s economic powerhouse has presided over several ambitious programs to make the city actually livable—a trend among other economic zones aiming to resemble the traditional metropoles they originally counterposed. Notable among these are Shenzhen’s sustainability aspirations, summed up in that ambiguous designation, “green city.” Sustainable-minded policies have also had felicitous effects for start-ups, which have found the city more conducive to innovation than Hong Kong.

Tallinn

The birthplace of Skype, Estonia’s capital is a digital hub frequently ranked among the smartest cities in the world —few places can match the red carpet it rolls out to entrepreneurs. Estonia recently began to issue e-residencies that allow foreigners to establish Estonian companies from anywhere in the world, and gain access to more than 4,000 local services. But Tallinn is not all about bits and bytes. In 2013, it made public transit free, increasing transportation accessibility for the city’s poorest residents.

Valparaíso

Built on hills—more than 40 of them—at the edge of the Pacific, Chile’s second city is rooted in a vintage cosmopolitanism. With a high walkability score, a lower cost of living, a milder climate, a preserved builtscape, and the ever-present ocean, Valparaíso is an attractive alternative to the nearby capital, Santiago. The Ex Cárcel Parque Cultural, a Pinochet-era prison-turned-art center, is representative of the booming arts scene, while start-ups are beginning to carve out niches in and around the historic cityscape.